"Refusing to Handle You"

Jose wrote:
Let's see if I can learn something, and turn this around. It's =you=
flying up the coast, say to Teterboro. You're directly on the other
side of Potomac Approach's airspace (whatever shape it happens to be at
that time). For argument's sake, you're at 5000 feet in a rental 172RG
with a moving map GPS, no radar, no spherics, and no weather imagery
available to you (except via descriptions on the radio). You have three
and a half hours of gas, and have a clearance through to your
destination, which takes you in between building TCU. There are cells
to your west and northwest somewhere, maybe forty miles off your route.
You're IMC.

"N423YL, Potomac is refusing to handle you. What are your intentions?"

How do you respond?

I'm not quite sure where you intended that I am in your scenario, but I'll
assume "the other side of Potomac" from Teterboro means I'm somewhere
around Gordonsville VOR.

Well, first I would ask myself what the heck I'm doing flying with no
weather imagery and embedded thunderstorms all around me. That's not my
idea of fun.

Second, I would realize that I no longer have clearance through to my
destination. Sure, we haven't yet dotted the I's and crossed the T's by
agreeing on a new clearance, but it's already been made clear to me that
the original plan just isn't happening any more.

I need to come up with an alternative plan. There's two basic choices;
land, or continue flying. Let's assume I decide I want to try to press on.
I need to fly around or over Potomac's airspace. So, I might start by
asking some questions:

"If I climbed up to 9000, would that help?"

Center comes back with, "Sorry, you'd need to get up to 13,000 to stay in
Center airspace on that route, can you make that?" (I'm making that up, but
it sounds plausable).

"Unable 13,000. Tell you what, can you give me direct Salisbury VOR for
now, and let me go off frequency for a while to talk to Flight Service?"

"N423YL, cleared to the Salisbury VOR via direct, maintain 5000, report
back on the frequency within 5 minutes".

At that point, I'd call up Flight Watch, figure out what the weather is
doing over there, and decide if I could continue or not. If things didn't
look good weather-wise in that direction, or I just decided the workload
was getting to high, I'd just pick a reasonable nearby airport and ask for
clearance to it. Once on the ground, I could take my time and make a new
plan.

A couple of weeks ago, I departed BWI for HPN with ****ty weather reported
at my destination, but forecast to clear up about by the time I got there.
Along the way, we got a re-route the long way around (i.e. New York was
refusing to work us). Called FSS, got a weather update, discovered things
still sucked at HPN (1/8 mile in heavy rain), got back to ATC and told them
I wanted to land at Allentown. Landed, bought some more fuel, met another
pilot who was ferrying a Pitts from New Jersey to California and spent an
hour swapping stories with him over lunch. By then, the weather had
cleared up a bit, and off we went.